Friday, 29 July 2016

The Wood Man Cometh

We are surrounded by oak and chestnut woods and stacks of felled
timber are everywhere, waiting for the massive lorries to come along and take the wood to the wholesalers.However, buying a
small amount of wood locally for our wood burner is a not as easy as you would
think.Once upon a time a local farmer
would sell us a few stères (cubic metre); he would load the wood onto
his trailer, fire up his tractor and deliver it straight into our courtyard,
helping Paul to stack it neatly.Then his supply of wood ran out.

Paul asked our neighbour Philippe if he would sell us some of
his wood.Mais non, he needed all the
wood for himself but his cousins had some seasoned chestnut for sale.One evening Paul and Philippe set off to the
other side of town to arrange the transaction.Several hours later Paul returned home with a distinct flush to his
face.The meeting with the cousins had clearly
involved a lot of pastis.They had then
visited the wood stack, inspected and carefully measured four stères
and then marked it with bright yellow paint.The following day we hitched the trailer to the car and went to collect
the wood. It took four trips and lots of log chucking.Never again I said.

That load of wood has lasted almost four years as we only
usually have the wood burner running during April and May.This year was unseasonably cold and we burnt
more than usual.Time to stock up with
more wood.

This afternoon we had four stères of chestnut
delivered.A massive shiny red truck slowly made
its way down our narrow lane, gingerly easing its way past Monique's house, before neatly depositing a huge pile of logs onto the grass.
Paul will cut the logs to size and stack them in the grange. I will supply refreshments.

14 comments:

We will have to think about ordering some wood ourselves - it's amazing how much we get through during winter on the log burner - do you live there all year round? Perhaps you should pop round to Cro's place - he seems to have tons of the stuff :)

Our last two houses have had W.B.S. s and they were fine but three years ago we made the decision to remove it here and revert to oil and electricity.Wood delivered to the front of the house, barrowed around the back to the stack, collected from there to be cut to the stove size, carried upstairs to the stove all winter proved too much like hard work. A lot less dust but I do miss it's solid warmth and that it worked during power cuts.

So now Paul has to cut it to size. I buy mine ready cut and it gets tipped off a transit into my yard right outside the wood shed, then I stack it away. Can you not buy it in France the right size for the woodburner? Would save a lot of hard work.